


The Quality of Mercy

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. Gary has occasion to find this out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Quality of Mercy

            It has more to do with the moment than anything else. He’s sitting there with a sour goblet of wine and bitter tears and half the Own reports, and she comes in, calm and compassionate, carrying the other half of the reports.

 

            She isn’t surprised to see he’s crying, but then, point one: Lady Knight Keladry is never visibly startled, disconcerted, or wrong-footed, much less surprised, and point two: he cries at all the oddest moments now and everyone is well aware of it. This time it was because a few moments ago his hands slipped, and he dropped his ink-bottle, which smashed on the floor, a pool of implacable blue spreading on the stone flags, staining the fine carpet, and the bottle was a special one his wife gave him and once a fortnight or sooner if it was a particularly bad month for bureaucracy she decanted more of the appalling ink supplied on government money-

 

            _Oh, Cythera_ , shards of memory in his mind, diamonds shining on her still breast at the wake, false glitter on rich velvet, smashed glass, crystal splinters of engraved escutcheon on the floor, and  he cries, adding the harsh prick of tears to the broken things all around him. It’s really just bad luck that the lady knight chooses that moment, right in the middle of his bout of weeping, to walk through the door.

 

            She skirts the encroaching pool, her measured tread not varying even slightly as she looks around, taking note of the disarray. She lays the spare reports on one side of his cluttered desk and rests her hand on a tiny clear space as she leans down to look into his face; he lifts his tear-stained head and looks at her serene eyes and he doesn’t even know why he does it but he jerks forward, covering the few centimetres between them, catching her lips with his as if he hopes she can make him feel alive again.

 

            She can’t. She tastes clean and warm, untouched by sadness, even though he knows about all the men she has lost over the years, all the friends and family who have gone to the Peaceful Realms: she’s fresh and young and _she deserves better than this_. He tears himself away; she isn’t the all-encompassing intensity he’s looking for, taking over his mind, whitewashing grief away like the bloodstains in the Hall of Crowns, made invisible mere days after the carnage of Jon’s coronation.

 

            He is ashamed of himself. It was a dishonour to the lady knight, and poor judgement – _no_ judgement – on his own behalf. He keeps his head down, and waits for her to go; anything so that he doesn’t have to look at her. He hopes that she doesn’t say anything, but knows that he’ll deserve whatever she does next.

 

            She takes her time, moving around the room on quiet booted feet; straightening a book here, sorting a fallen stack of papers there, re-hanging the miniature of Cythera and covering it with a handkerchief so he doesn’t have to look. Finally, she stands in front of his desk again. He doesn’t dare to look up.

 

            “Grief makes all of us do things we wouldn’t otherwise,” she says, and her voice is gentle, and Gary wonders who taught her compassion if Wyldon taught her discipline and Raoul taught her command: maybe it’s one of those inborn qualities he’s never quite understood because you can’t quantify them. She lays a hand on his bent head, brushes his hair into a semblance of order with blunt, calloused fingers, and it feels like a blessing. “I’ll send a maid to clean up the ink. When did you last eat?”

 

            Gary thanks Mithros for the mercy of a lady knight, and joins a hundred others in succumbing to the temptation to let Keladry take care of him.


End file.
